Some people don't need extensive convincing about anabolic hormones. This post is written assuming you're talking to the most difficult and critical group of laypeople who are nonetheless open to your viewpoints -- that way, any other discussion will be easier.

Any time you are talking with a layperson about steroids, you need to try to avoid saying anything that paints you as a Roid User Stereotype.

If you are too angry, you can be accused of "roid rage" and instantly dismissed, because they will think "if I take it I will act like this guy." We all know roid rage isn't a thing, but they don't. So your job is to convince them rational people exist who use these things.

If you come off as too enthusiastic, you run the risk of looking like a junkie. People think steroids = needles = heroin = steroids are as harmful as heroin. It doesn't matter if they're wrong. They think it and they vote.

So, rules of conversation that are important in everyday civilized discussion become even more important when trying to make the case that a hormone attributed to anger and destruction should be legal.

Try your best not to swear or seem angry. If you do swear, make sure it's very strategic swearing. If you do seem angry, make sure it comes off as a professional kind of outrage, like a doctor who is outraged that a beneficial treatment is not allowed -- because that's what doctors would do if TRT were outright illegal.

Make sure to NEVER insult your opponent. Only respond to their reasons, and respond to their reasons with evidence. Don't say "you have no idea what you're talking about" or "you're an idiot" or anything like this. If avoiding these things makes you seem like a robot, that's fine. It's preferable to seeming angry. If you are so angry you can't have the discussion any more, POLITELY leave.

At the same time, don't be condescending. Normal people already feel threatened by you because you lift. And I'm pretty sure this applies to 99% of this board because for however much you don't think you lift, normal people really really don't lift. Regardless of how silly it is, "bigger than me" means "person who could maybe beat me up" in caveman logic. The last a regular person needs is a lecture from a person who is both stronger AND smarter than them.

But how you frame anabolics matters a lot too, so here's an unassorted list of points to remember and/or emphasize:

Don't say "steroids." Say "male hormones."

Yes, I realize that steroids are male hormones, and YOU realize that steroids are hormones, but the average person barely knows anything about this, and hasn't bothered to make the connection that testosterone = male hormone = steroid. You have a limited amount of time to convince people, usually, so make sure you don't lose their attention.

Mention that estrogen is a steroid also, and in the birth control pill

Many women take the pill and advocate for its availability. The reasoning I use is something like "estrogen is a steroid, it's just not an anabolic steroid, because it's not a male hormone, and male hormones tend to help build muscle."

The average person does not realize that estrogen = steroid, and that testosterone = steroid, just that testosterone happens to be a steroid that builds muscle.

You will get a lot of support from women who find this hypocritical. Many women I've talked to don't realize that estrogen is in the birth control pill, so they don't bother to think "hey, my sex hormones help me not get pregnant, so why wouldn't giving men their sex hormones help them not impregnate me?" I've been able to convince a lot of the women I know this way. (The women I associate with are pretty open-minded, but still. They'd be against it if I hadn't said anything.)

Frame testosterone in terms of birth control.

I realize that testosterone is not primarily used as birth control, but it has been used as such before. Trestolone is also useful to mention, because of how it's been used for birth control purposes and can also be used for muscle-building.

Avoid the "cheating" debate by mentioning that athletics would be unfair even if they were drug free.

I'm just going to copy-paste this: "the anti-cheating stance is a losing battle since (a) it's been a losing battle for decades, tests are extremely beatable and (b) athletes are already at some kind of genetic advantage anyway if they're winning. They'd have to be -- the number of things you can do to make yourself better at a sport is finite, while genetic variation will continue all the way along the top level. (Examples of this variation include factors like your predisposition to building muscle, your natural testosterone levels, your maximum vo2max, and so on.) ... The idea that drugs give an unfair advantage and genetics don't would be true assuming equal genetic advantage, but when you're looking at the highest levels of the sport you're looking at the athletic height of 7 billion people, which is a ton of genetic variation to pool from. Reducing all advantages period would be a really losing battle, so it's more consistent to just say "athletes will take these anyway, so let's see what they can do when they don't have to hide it."

Mention that steroids already were legal for a long time without many consequences, and that criminalizing them produces consequences of its own.

This is what I said: "Arnold did steroids more safely because the drugs were legal and he knew what he was getting. When you don't know the product you're getting, there is a much greater risk of dilution, contaminants, etc. Also, this isn't like, say, LSD, which was a craze then was illegal pretty much everywhere before we could even study it. We have a pretty good idea of what it'd look like if these drugs were legal again because they were before, and they still are legal in something like a dozen countries and decriminalized in others."

Mention that the AMA, FDA, NIDA, NIH, and DEA actually testified in opposition to the inclusion of male sex hormones under the Controlled Substances Act.

Most people are under the impression that steroids are illegal for health reasons, and not for sporting reasons.

When I say things like this, most people give me weird looks, because they are still under the impression that drug laws are scaled to drug harm: "The primary roadblock to male birth control is that they all involve male sex hormones like testosterone. Ergo, you can take these to be better at sports. If you can take them to be better at sports, this is a fast-track to their criminalization. So the issue isn't really developing male birth control, it's developing male birth control that doesn't help you be better at sports."

Mention the inconsistencies in scheduling as support for this being about sports.

Metenolone is grouped with testosterone and trenbolone, despite metenolone being extremely unharmful and trenbolone being harmful in at least some respects. The only commonality they have is that they benefit an athlete. If these drugs were illegal for purely health reasons, they'd be in different schedules.

Mention that testosterone is produced by your body, so it must be safe at some doses.

Most women I've talked to don't know that they have testosterone. When I say "your testosterone levels", they look at me with this blank expression on their face like they didn't know that was possible.

Attack the category "anabolic steroid" for being misleading in this kind of discussion.

The category "anabolic steroid" is as useful to assess safety/unsafety as "pain-killer" is, because "pain-killer" includes both ibuprofen and heroin. Saying "anabolic steroids are harmful" is like saying "painkillers are harmful." Well, yes, some are, in certain dosages, but as a category? No.

Mention that drug laws do not have to correspond to drug harm.

Here is a comparative drug harm chart by David Nutt. Steroids rank toward the bottom.

Virtually everyone is aware that cannabis is mostly harmless. They think steroids are toward the top of harm, so this is a clear discrepancy in perception. If you stress that they're less harmful than cannabis, this will change perceptions.

Try to use chemical names instead of steroid slang.

Saying "tamoxifen" or "clomifene" might be annoying, but you sound more credible to regular people when you do this. If you say "you can treat side-effects with tamoxifen, HCG, and an aromatase inhibitor" you sound immensely more believable than a person who says "you won't get sides if you PCT with HCG and pop some nolva or clomid." If this sounds pretentious to you or you never talk this way, just roll with it.

You will need to prioritize some steroids and throw others under the bus.

Think about the most harmless hormones we can take. Those are the steroids you should be advocating for.

So: testosterone, nandrolone, methenolone (primo), oxandrolone (anavar), and maybe MAYBE methandrostenolone (dbol).

But testosterone comes first, then nandrolone/methenolone/anavar, then everything else.

DO NOT try advocating for making tren or halo legal. This is suicide. People will google trenbolone and say "wtf, they give this to cattle? and you're putting that in your body?" OR someone will mention that tren killed Zyzz which will lead to a discussion about what really killed him, and so on.

Anyway, it's possible to convince laypeople that these hormones are fine. In a perfect world, we could just give everyone a textbook and have them learn how these drugs work, so then they'd say "what's the big deal?" -- but, no one is going to read that textbook, so you need to do the convincing.

It's very possible. You just need to avoid certain pitfalls when making your arguments and make sure to stress certain points over others.

I hope this helps, because all of us benefit.

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